Romney: I’m not willing to borrow money from China to fund PBS

Mitt Romney likes PBS, but says it’s time for the public broadcasting television network to stop relying on taxpayer funding and find private income sources instead.

“I think there will be things that we think are nice programs, and we’ll say to ourselves, is this program so critical it’s worth borrowing money from China to pay for it?” Romney said in an interview with Time magazine’s Mark Halperin on Wednesday. (RELATED: Full coverage of the Romney campaign)

“I like PBS. I’d like my grandkids to be able to watch PBS,” the presumptive GOP nominee said. “But I’m not willing to borrow money from China and make my kids have to pay the interest on that, and my grandkids, over generations, as opposed to saying to PBS, look, you’re going to have to raise more money from charitable contributions or from advertising.”

Yet Romney wouldn’t budge when asked to specifically name cabinet departments or agencies he would do away with if he were elected president.

He said his experience as governor of Massachusetts taught him that it’s best to wait until in office when he can work with the legislature to find areas to cut the cost of government.

“Interestingly, as I got in and was actually becoming the governor and was able to go line by line through the budget, we found places we would have never imagined would be opportunities for reducing cost,” Romney said. “So I know they will be there.”